Dhru Purohit Show - The #1 Thing Stopping You From Losing Visceral Fat & Building Muscle! | Round #2 with Sal Di Stefano

Episode Date: November 27, 2023

This episode is brought to you by ButcherBox and Cozy Earth.  Our modern society doesn’t always allow daily movement, eating whole foods, and prioritizing quality sleep. Yet we know these factors, among others, are critical for preventing chronic disease and increasing longevity. With all the content on movement, calories, and body composition, it can be challenging to sort through what we must implement and what we don’t have to expend as much energy avoiding. Whether you are just starting your wellness journey or looking to move to the next level, this episode is for you.  Today on The Dhru Purohit Podcast, Dhru sits down for round two with personal trainer and co-founder of Mind Pump Media, Sal Di Stefano, to get his expertise on losing belly fat, calorie counting, strength training, and community. Sal shares the latest research on forming healthy habits, movement, and cancer prevention. He also shares his best practices for strength training for beginners or those looking to optimize their workout routines. He also discusses the importance of sleep, critical supplements for recovery, and how to change our algorithms for optimal personal growth.  In this episode, Dhru and Sal dive into (audio version / Apple Subscriber version): Why you can’t lose belly fat (2:20 /2:20) The benefits from strength training (15:10 /12:19)  Why bodybuilders have lower chances of cancer (17:00 /14:04) The overconsumption of ultra-processed foods globally and the connection to overeating (26:13 /24:00)  The role of cortisol and stress in gaining belly fat (31:44 / 28:59) Profound changes after the age of 65 (50:15 / 47:28) Gyms as a source of community (55:25 /52:35) The appropriate way to train and the importance of moving each day (1:02:33 / 59:58) Sal’s suggestions for strength training for beginners, habit stacking, and protein intake (1:11:07 / 1:08:16) The best modalities to help with recovery (1:33:43 / 1:30:47)  Alcohol consumption in moderation versus consumption for numbing (1;39:25 / 1:36:37) Demonization and politicization of wellness and exercise in the media (1:47:00 / 1:44:00)  Also mentioned in this episode: Mind Pump Podcast MAPS 15 Fitness Programs Study on Sleep Regularity Right now, new members of ButcherBox receive New York Strip steaks for a year PLUS $20 off your first order. Go to butcherbox.com/DHRU to sign up and use code DHRU.  Right now, get 40% off your Cozy Earth sheets. Just head over to cozyearth.com and use code DHRUP. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Your body will only ever be as strong and as fit and as healthy as it thinks it needs to be. Our bodies evolved to be incredibly efficient with energy. For most of the human history, food was scarce. So one of the primary drivers of evolution for humans was how do we survive in scarcity? And one of the side effects or effects of that was if we don't use it, we lose it. If as you get older, you become less and less active, your body is going to continue. you to meet that and adapt that way. Welcome to the Drew Proet podcast.

Each week, we explore the inner workings of the brain and the body with one of the brightest minds in wellness, medicine, and mindset. This week's guest is Sal the Stephano, and he's back on the podcast today to talk about the biggest mistakes people make when it comes to trying to optimize their diets to lose weight and improve their body composition and the biggest mistakes that people make when it comes to wanting to focus on building muscle for longevity, which I hope everybody. on that mission listening to this podcast. Now, Sal's first appearance on the show was a huge hit with over a half a million plays and listens on the groundbreaking episode. And his round two,

which is today, is guaranteed to deliver as well. Now, a little bit more about Sal DeStefano. Sal is a recognized expert and sought after authority on all things fitness and wellness. He's the co-host of the Mind Pump podcast and publishes five days a week with his dear friends and co-host Doug, Adam, and Justin. Sal's passion for fitness, health, and people is unmatched, and he's steadfast with his goal of making the fitness industry one that is a force for good with long-term health being the focus and not one that is riddled with diet pills, crash diets, false promises, and quick fixes.

Stay tuned for round two with Sal DeStefano. Sal, welcome back to the podcast. Some people are convinced of the reason that they can't lose fat. especially in their midsection, their belly fat is because they're eating too much sugar and too much carbohydrates. What's the truth on this? Give us your opinion. There's a lot of correlations that people then try to make the cause or the causation. So what they do is you'll look at a big study and you'll say, oh, people are consuming more carbohydrates than ever. This must be the reason why we have obesity or our fat intake is increased. This must be the reason why we're obese.

Or, I'll use a great example, look at sodium and its connection to chronic disease. It must be, you know, we've got to cut sodium now. What they're really looking at, and this is really interesting, it's actually quite simple. The three ingredients, you talk to any chef or anybody who is a food scientist, ask them, what are the three main components of palatibility? What will they say? Salt, sugar, fat. Okay. Now, there's lots of chemicals and things they can use now, and food scientists are quite, it's remarkable if you ever talk to a food scientist, the science that goes into making foods palatable. But those are the three main ingredients, okay? So what you're seeing is a correlation. People are consuming more food, period, end of story. And the people that consume the most are consuming more palatable foods, which always are typically high in salt, sugar, or fat. The truth is that excess calories are what make us gain weight. Now, that's an oversimplification because I know, and I know this, I coached and trained people for decades, okay? It's definitely an oversimplification. But the truth is, if you don't eat more calories and you burn, there is no

way for your body to build fat. It doesn't have the energy to do so. Unless you could capture energy out of the cosmos, which in which case you should go and get studied by physicists because that would break all the rules of thermodynamics. It's just not how it works. So, okay, so let's look at the connection between carbohydrates or fats or, you know, what's happening with us. Really, what you want to look at is the most important thing is, how can I eat a diet that encourages me to not overeat or to put it differently?

what kind of diet makes it hard for me. What kind of diet makes me want to overeat? And the truth across the board with this, because there are individual variances, you have different food preferences than I do, but across the board, heavily processed foods will do this. And I might have brought this up on the last interview we did,

but the studies on those are some of my favorites because diet studies are notoriously unreliable. They're typically survey-based. So it's like, how many tomatoes did you eat in the last three weeks? It's like, okay, well, I'm going to guess, right? Or how many calories you think you're eating? Or let's try and figure this out. The studies on hyper or, you know, heavily processed foods are very controlled.

They actually take people, put them in a lab, watch what they eat, provide them with unlimited heavily processed foods or they'll take this group and provide them with unlimited whole foods. They'll even control the macros. Similar macrobrook down, protein, fats, and carbs. And they'll take the groups and switch rooms. So it's really well made. And every study done on this is shown that on average people will consume 600 more calories a day when they eat the heavily processed foods.

And that's just because they're irresistible. They've been designed to be irresistible. And so overeating is really baked into it. So if you avoid those foods, you're most likely, and it's more complex than this, because we do eat for reasons other than cravings and hunger, right? There's emotional eating and I'm bored and anxious. and that kind of stuff. But for the most part, if you avoid those foods, you're going to eat less, just naturally.

You're not even going to have to try. Your body will just tell you, I'm satisfied, and you'll eat less. Now, if we break down macro breakdowns even further, because there's a lot of nuance here, but there's another thing that seems to be true for the most part, okay, across the board. And I say most part because there are cases where this isn't true. But for the most part, a high protein diet also is quite a very important. effective at controlling hunger. Protein is extremely satiety producing. Okay, if you take two diets identical, one is high protein, one is low protein, the high protein diet people feel way more

satiety than the low protein diet. But there's a little more to that as well. High protein diet contributes to muscle gain more effectively. And there seems to be, and I'm careful when I say this because metabolism is incredibly complex. Human or mammalian metabolism is the only thing more complex than it that we've identified as a human brain. Okay. But protein seems to also have a thermogenic effect. So when we look at studies where the calories are identical, high protein versus low protein,

we see more muscle less fat in the high protein diet than in the low protein diet, even though the calories are the same. So protein is interesting in that sense. And it seems to be true for the most part. I say the most part because there are some cases. where people will try to hit a high protein intake, and it just doesn't feel well. Their digestion may be off,

in which case I'd say, listen to your body. Now, when we get to carbs and fats, this is where the nuance really starts to kick in. Okay. There is an essential amount of fat that you want to consume. Fat is an essential macronutrient, meaning you have to consume enough to meet your needs. If you go below that, then you're just going to fail to thrive.

You won't be able to, you won't be healthy, period, end of story. So once you hit that minimum, then you can play with your carbohydrate and fat intake and really base it on how you feel. What makes my digestion feel the best? What gives me the most or the best energy? What seems to affect my mood the best? What are the foods I enjoy the eat the most? And then you see this wide variety.

You know, like I'm, I do much better on a higher fat, lower carbohydrate diet. I just tend to feel sharper and better. Now, if I know I'm going to go do a high performance workout, you know, let's say I'm going to work out with my friends and, you know, I want to show off a little bit. We're going to see who's stronger or whatever. I'll bump the carbs up because there's a performance benefit to it. But for the most part, you know, doing stuff like this and living my regular life, I'd rather be sharp mentally. And a higher fat diet tends to do that for me. There's people where it's the opposite. When their carbohydrates get a little low, they feel foggy. They don't feel good. They get moody, in which case they can bump their carbohydrates. Now, of course, this is in the context of the calories being the same. So that's what I tell people. You've got to listen to your body. Now, there are morphologies where, you know, we can break it down even further. Fatty acid content.

Some people seem to get blood lipid levels that don't look so good when they're saturated and fat intake. Let's say it's too high and they seem to do better when they trade those for other types of fats. Other people are not affected. I'm one of those people. I eat a lot of red meat. I had a lot of eggs. and my lipid profile is always incredible. I have had clients, though,

where we've had to switch that around a little bit. Nonetheless, I will say this, the potential negative effects that we've identified from a diet that's higher in sugar or higher in some of those fats that I mentioned, like saturated fats, a lot of that seems to get erased when your calories are not that high.

In fact, there's been people who've tried to prove this point, and I don't necessarily like these examples. because I think it oversimplifies things, but you'll see people will go, I'm just going to eat McDonald's and I'm going to show everybody that I'm going to improve my blood markers. And what they do is eat a low calorie McDonald's diet. And they do show improvements. I don't like those examples because try to eat McDonald's and eat low calorie all the time. Good luck. You're going to find yourself craving more and more food because that's designed to make you overeat. But that's pretty much it. So if I had to say rule number one, eat only whole foods or eat as much of your diet

and whole foods as possible. Number two, try to hit your target body weight in grams of protein. And then the rest is up to your personal preference and you're going to be okay. That's like 90% of it. This episode is brought to you by Butcher Box. You know, when I made the decision to include animal foods into my diet after I'd been vegetarian for years, my biggest focus was on quality. I got to say, looking back, I wish you.

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Just go to butcherbox.com slash Drew, that's D-H-R-U, to sign up and use the code D-H-R-U, Drew, that's me, and you can get these incredible stakes for free all your long. That's butcher, B-U-T-C-H-E-R-B-O-X.com slash D-H-R-U with the code, Drew, D-H-R-U to get $20 off plus an entire year of New York strip stakes. This episode is brought to you by Cozy Earth. I've recorded over 400 podcasts to date, and experts of all types have continuously reminded my audience that their number one factor for better health and longevity is, can you guess, sleep. Whether you're looking to optimize longevity, lose weight, or protect against chronic disease,

prioritizing your sleep is super-duper important. And when it comes to creating an optimal sleep environment, high-quality bedsheets truly make a world of a difference. I know they did for me. Enter Cozy Earth. Cozy Earth's best-selling bamboo bedsheets are insanely, insanely soft and comfortable. I love them because they're moisture wicking, breathable, temperature regulating, so I sleep cool and sound all night long. My wife loves them because they're no pill super durable and because I no longer wake her up by ripping off the sheets in a heated

frenzy. True story. Right now, Cozy Earth is offering my listeners 40% off sitewide with the code D-H-R-U-P. That's my first lame and my last initial at checkout. Just head over to cozy earth.com and use the code, Drew. at checkout. That's cozyearth.com slash dhrU P for 40% off. It's wild because even though we all may not want to live that lifestyle or pursue that, we can still learn different lessons from different populations or at least possible lessons. And then when you combine that with some of the other data that's out there, all of a sudden there's a combination of things that we can do to not only protect ourselves against cancer, which exercise seems to be a huge part of that. But we can also

dial in our body composition. We can also support our longevity without all the excess strain that comes from training incredibly, incredibly difficultly and also taking steroids and other stuff, which none of us really want to do. No, no. And, you know, Dr. Gabriel Lyon, you know, she's been talking a lot about this, about the obesity epidemic. And she says that, Being over fat isn't the problem. The problem is being undermuscled. I agree with her 100%. I think body fat, we call it the obesity epidemic,

but I think what we're looking at is the smoke. I think we're not looking at the fire. Like what's causing this problem? And it is, I agree with her. It is being under muscle, not having metabolically active tissue like muscle to offset the lifestyle that we live. And we see this again, data. It's so protective, especially, and the reason why I preach strength training so much

isn't because other forms of exercise aren't beneficial. Done appropriately and properly, all forms of activity are very, very healthy. So I don't want to discourage anyone from doing things that they love. Like if they listen to me and say, well, he says strength training, but I love running every day and it feels good. It's like, no, no, don't stop that. It's all good for you. Strength training, I think, is unique in the sense that it directly combats the effects of of modern life, which is sedatory yet busy, also surrounded by hyper-palatable food. So we're just eating a lot. You also don't need to do a lot of it to get the benefits from it.

So if the average person strength trained and they did it effectively, that doesn't mean hard. That means effective. Okay. So there's a right dose. If you do it right, two days a week, you will get significant, significant health effects. you can't say that about other forms of exercise. Like if you took somebody, you took the average person

and you just had them walk an equal amount of time that we would do with the strength range. So let's say 45 minutes twice a week, which I would be able to do with most people. If they just walk twice a week, 45 minutes, they would see some improvements, but they wouldn't get the same bang for the buck that they would get from strength training.

And that's less about the activity portion of the exercise and more to do about the protective effects of the muscle itself. Because once you build it, it's on you. So like I'm sitting here right now. I'm not active. You know, just my mouth is moving basically. But the muscle that I carry has a very protective effects. And so it's a nice buffer. And that's why I preach strength training so much to the average person. I'm not telling everybody to become a bodybuilder. And even if you wanted to be one, good luck. It's a very tough thing to do. Really what I'm saying is, you know, look, you're probably going to work out a couple days a week

anyway because most of us are not fitness fanatics. If you live the life that most of us do in modern societies, this is going to give you more for the time spent than any other form of exercise. And that's just because it builds the muscle. So here's something mind-blowing that I learned from you that I'd love for you to break down. Bodybuilders, meaning those people who actually have more muscle mass than the typical person in the population actually have a lower risk of cancer. What's going on there that this would be the case? Yeah, so let me paint the picture more clearly because it blew my mind when I saw some of this data. And here's why I blew my mind. When we're talking about bodybuilders, competitive bodybuilders, this is a subset of the

population where they take it to the extreme. So for example, exercise is healthy. Okay. But if you go too far with it, if your pursuit is extreme performance, you start to trade longevity for performance. So like if you look at like high level athletes, football players, basketball players, track athletes, long distance runners, you'll find that their longevity isn't that great because they've surpassed the point of longevity and now they're pursuing maximum performance. Those extremes, there's always a tradeoff. Okay. And bodybuilders are as extreme as it gets when it comes a muscle building. So muscle building, very healthy. Average person, go build muscle.

Very good for you. You want to compete in bodybuilding. Well, now that's like everything you do. You're feeding your body excessively. You're taking anabolic steroids and other hormones. You're dieting for shows in extreme ways, oftentimes taking drugs that help you burn body fat, things that are not approved to do so. Bodybuilders live anything but a healthy lifestyle. Okay.

So when I saw the data on the fact that they had lower cancer rates in the average person, I was blown away because I expected them to have worse health across the board. Now, it's true. They have higher rates of heart issues and other organ issues, probably result of the drug use that they do. But the fact that they're taking things like growth hormone, testosterone, really high superphysiological doses, that they beat their bodies up, that they diet the way they do. And when I say diet, what I mean is not your traditional almond get fit. like they'll get down to 2% body fat, dehydrate their bodies.

When they're on stage, they're literally walking zombies. And yet their cancer rates were significantly lower. And what that did is it pointed to the incredibly protective effects or anti-cancer effects of building muscle. So although they live a very unhealthy life in pursuit of this extreme sport, if you will, they still have lower cancer rates. And what that highlights is just how protective muscle is in the context. of cancer. And that's probably to do with the mitochondrial health that muscle presents.

The glycogen storing effects, right? The muscles' ability to store or to react to sugar in the blood, but really mitochondria. And if you look at, and I'm not an expert on cancer, I think it's a very complicated topic, even if you talk to experts on the subject. But they will say that mitochondrial dysfunction lies somewhere at the root of what's happening with cancers across the board. Now, this is important because, you know, years ago, I trained lots of doctors and I did have some cancer specialists. And years ago, I had a family member who was fighting cancer. So I became very, very enthralled with the topic of the subject. This was someone I cared about. And I remember, you know, I talked to my friend who was a cancer specialist.

And I asked him about cancers and he said, you know, they're all very different. They're all very different. You know, colon cancer is very different for breast cancer. We call them cancer. But how you treat one may not work with how you treat another one. I remember specifically I brought up the Warburg effect. And I said, oh, why don't we just take out carbohydrates? Can't we just put people on ketogenic diets?

And says, well, some cases that works. He goes, you do realize in some cases cancers feed off of ketones. And I'm like, well, and that's when he told me about the differences between them. So to find something that seems to be common with all of them is very interesting. And that's mitochondrial dysfunction. It seems to be at the root of most of them. And we know that building muscle, the process of building muscle, really improves how mitochondria utilize energy, how healthy they stay and the effects it has on your cells.

And building muscle is a great way to do this. So when you look at these bodybuilders who, and I know the space very well, I never competed or anything like that, but I have friends who are bodybuilders, I know the space very well, I worked in gyms. They're not healthy. They don't live a healthy lifestyle. And yet they have lower cancer rates. It's really crazy. Before we hit record, I was showing you a tweet from Dr. Suchin Panda, who's a friend. He's been on this podcast before. He's known for his deep work in sort of circadian rhythm science. And for those that are watching on YouTube, the tweet over here is he links to an abstract, review in the journal Cancer Biology. I think it's called seminars, cancer biology, and even 30 minutes a day on the top of cancer, 30 minutes of day, and this doesn't include strength training. They didn't do just strength training. They were looking at all exercise. Just even 30 minutes a day

is a super protective effect against reducing your total overall risk of all cancers that are out there, which is like massive. And I would guess that if you did strength training and you focused on just that alone, it would go back probably. We don't know. I don't think a study has been done on that besides the bodybuilders. No, they've actually compared the anti-cancer effects of different forms of exercise and strength training is at the top. So it's superior. We know that. It is. All forms of exercise have an anti-cancer effect. But strength training is the best one. Now, of course, in an ideal world, I want to be very clear, in an ideal world, if you're watching this and you're like, okay, I have time, I'm going to make time. You want to be active every day. You want to

include some form of activity every day throughout the day. You want to pepper it throughout the day. It's probably the best way to do it. And you want to do some strength training. But if you're only going to pick one and you know yourself and I'm not going to work out every day, it's not going to happen, then the strength training will give you the best protective effect. But you know what's interesting about this. What studies like this remind me of are the studies on things like on nutrients, like vitamin D. People who took vitamin D had far less, you know, bone fracture rates or, you know, better immune systems. It's not that the vitamin D was magical.

It was that most people or many people are deficient. So when we see stuff like this, it's not that exercise is this magical thing. It's that we're so inactive, we're so inactive that a lot of our diseases are the result of our inactivity. And so what you're seeing here is the effect of this is what you're supposed to do, probably more than this. So it's not that the exercise itself is this magic medicine. it's that if you don't do it, it's so bad for you that you see these higher rates of cancer

across the board. So it's fair to say for everybody who's listening, you know, for those that are out there trying to convince you that carbs is the reason that you've gained weight or too much sugar instead of diet. Obviously all carbs get broken down to sugar. Or fat is the reason. It's really fundamentally you have to have excess calories if we're talking about ongoing weight gain.

It's a lot more complicated on that. but without the excess calories, you're just not going to be adding the extra weight. That's correct. 100%. And you're going to erase a lot of the issues associated with those, with the consumption of those things. Look, there's populations in the world that eat a whole food-based diet that are super high in carbohydrates. And they do, they're extremely healthy. And then there's other populations in the world that eat a very high fat.

you look at the traditional Inuit diet, right? So it's like very high fat, high protein diet, almost no carbohydrates that are very healthy as well. They don't overeat. That's what it is across the board. So, and again, that's the challenge. Like if you live in this world, this modern world, the big challenges, how do I not overeat?

Because everything around me is designed, you know, markets are amazing. but they're also could be dangerous because they give us what we want. They don't necessarily give us what we need. And what do we want?

We want enjoyable food. We want food that, man, every time I take a bite, I am just excited to eat this meal. And so markets have done that. They've invested a lot of time and energy into making foods so palatable

that it's, you have to white knuckle your way through and try to eat an appropriate amount of calories. If you stick to whole foods, try overeating. I dare you. If you eat a whole food high protein diet, you probably won't over it. In fact, it'll be very difficult to do so. Well, what you were hinting out before where people showcase that, hey, listen, you can eat at McDonald's every single day, every single meal and still see improvements.

Those individuals that might be running those experiments are staying within the appropriate calorie range for them. But there's this whole movement now. And maybe Tesla, we could Google this. just Google like ultra processed foods can be healthy. I'm sure you've seen this. So Guardian here for those that are watching, some ultra-processed foods are good for your health. WHO-backed study finds. And I believe this is the one that I came across.

I don't know. Was this article I might have seen on CNN? Yeah. But the argument there that some of these researchers have been making is that, hey, listen, the world is so addicted to ultra-processed foods in the United States upwards of almost 70% of our calories. are coming from ultra-processed foods. The rest of the world, especially Middle East, India,

other countries are following in suit. So we have to teach people how to be healthy eating these ultra-process foods. In one way, you're saying that, okay, sure, if you stick to a certain calorie range, but the problem is good luck trying to do that over the course of your lifetime. Yeah, so let me be very clear, okay?

ultra-processed foods are not inherently unhealthy, although a lot of them are, you can make a food that is somewhat healthy. Now, it's fortified with nutrients. It's got a good macro breakdown. So you could look at something and go, okay, this, if consumed appropriately, right, in the context of a, you know, a calorie count that's right for me, this will be healthy. Yes, yes, that's true. Also, ultra-processed foods have a long shelf life.

There's value to that, okay? You tried delivering food to corners of the world where people are hungry, tried delivering them fresh fruits and vegetables and meats, and you run into some serious problems, right? By the time it gets there, 60% of the food has gone bad and it's expensive. And so I get that, right? I understand that. And there's value in that.

So I'm not saying destroy processed foods, okay? What I'm trying to say is this is the argument. And what they try to do, by the way, is they try to twist the argument. And now you may be wondering, and we'll veer off for a second, why are they making these arguments? The processed food market is extremely profitable. There's huge incentives to keep the average person eating a 70% processed food diet. Now, why is it so profitable? Well, if I take a potato, I can't patent the potato.

You can grow potatoes. I can grow potatoes. we could sell them. I can't patent mine and sell it and make it special. But if I take that potato and combine it with some other ingredients and make a potato snack, well, now you can't copy me. I can patent it. I can protect it.

So processed foods in markets can be very, very valuable and very profitable. Whole foods, maybe with the exception of genetically modified foods, which can be protected by patent, which is a whole other conversation. largely the margins are tiny, you know, grow beef, sell beef, grow corn, you know, non-GMO corn, grow, you know, rice, potato, carrots. The margins are small because I can't protect my product. Everybody can grow them. So there's a lot of incentives to put information out there.

And this is, I wouldn't call it disinformation, but it is misinformation in the sense that, yes, if your calories are within the range, they're supposed to. if you're getting adequate proteins and fats and nutrients, can it be healthy compared to a diet that lacks those nutrients or a high calorie diet? Yes, yes. Here's the problem. And I'm not talking to the person who's struggling to get food who's like, oh my God, I'm starving.

Thank you for delivering this bread or this, you know, spam or whatever, right? I understand that. I'm talking to the average person. Most of us in modern societies don't, we don't have a starvation problem. Let's be very clear. more people are going to die from overconsumption, obesity, by far, than under consumption. Starvation is not an issue, really, in modern society. So that's what I'm talking to.

And what I'm saying is, if you want to be healthy, be aware, be very aware that these foods will make you overeat. Or you're going to have to count your calories every single day and play that game. And in my experience, that's not a long-term strategy. It sucks. It's hard. It's too hyper-aware and counting and tracking. and it makes food and diet become stressful.

And stress does not contribute to healthy eating habits. It does the opposite. And so you find this. You find people counting calories and counting everything that they put in their mouth. And I'm eating these processed foods from this company that tells me that if I buy their frozen foods and just eat them, I'm going to be healthy. The fail rate on them is terrible. Everybody fails.

At some point, like, I just want to go, I don't want to be stressed out. I don't want to count every calorie that goes into my mouth. Well, what I'm saying, and the data will back me up, is, you don't have to pay attention to your protein. That's about it. Avoid heavily processed foods for the most part. And you will naturally, unless you have some really bad relationship with food issues, which some people do have, and I respect that.

I understand that. It's another challenge. But for most people, if you just did that, not going to get shredded. You're not going to walk around a six-pack. But you're going to fall within a healthy body fat percentage. So for a man, you're probably going to be around 15, 16% body fat. if you do that, you'll naturally fall in that place. And for women, you're probably going to fall somewhere in the low to mid-20s with body fat

percentage. You're not going to have people walking around 60, 70, 80 pounds, overweight, if they follow that advice. I don't know if you've seen this, but there's some clips that are floating around, different experts saying this, but people saying that the number one driver of belly fat is high cortisol. Have you seen this? I have. I have.

And I think that knowing some of the people that are out there that are saying this, of course, you've mentioned that weight gain has multiple different aspects to it. Part of what I feel is that we're doing a little bit of disservice to individuals by making them feel that stress is the primary driver of weight gain when just hearing what you shared earlier, which is that you have to have the excess calories first. Not that stress can't play a major role in it. What's your take on this whole, Clint? Okay. How hormones affect fat storage, muscle gain, behaviors, mood is very complex. Hormonal imbalances can definitely drive unhealthy behaviors. So let's start with that, right?

So if you're a man and your testosterone levels that, they are low, you've got cortisol level. levels that are inappropriate, and I use the word inappropriate, I don't use the word high because you want high cortisol in the morning. You talk to any hormone specialists and a healthy cortisol level comes up in the morning peaks and then starts to drop throughout the day so you can go to sleep. Inappropriate cortisol levels are typically the opposite. They're low in the morning. I need tons of caffeine to get myself to wake up and then, oh, now I'm stressed out another high and I can't sleep at night. That's a common inappropriate cortisol level. But in hormone levels that are off, although they cause things, they cause things that happen in your body and they can drive

behaviors, they're the result of something else. Again, it's a smoke. Okay. So what's causing my hormone levels to be all over the place? Well, poor lifestyle, bad sleeping patterns, abusive stimulants or sedatives, bad diet, not exercising, not exercising will really cause hormones to not be in optimal ranges. Like men, we know this. Like if you don't exercise, your testosterone levels will probably drop.

Your androgen receptor density will probably will definitely go down. We know when women will see these changes in estrogen and progesterone that are not so balanced. Now, when cortisol levels are inappropriate, there is evidence to suggest that it can change fat storage patterns. Okay. It can definitely do that. There is a lot of debate as to how big of a difference it's going to make. So let's say you're a female and you typically store body fat, and the way that women do, which is around the lower body,

it's probably not going to all of a sudden make you just store body fat in your belly. And, you know, it's not going to change everything radically. That's what the data seems to suggest. But here's why I think people are hitting that button. Because if I say cortisol is the problem, cortisol, cortisol, cortisol. What typically follows is my solution, which is a cortisol lowering supplement. take aschwaganda, take this, lowers cortisol, here's my, here's my patented whatever, that's going to fix the problem.

The real answer to hormone imbalances is to lead a life that is healthy. And what you'll find is the hormones will follow. Now, there are cases where that doesn't happen, in which case there's something else that's underlying. But for the most part, if you live a lifestyle that is balanced and healthy, you're going to have hormone levels that reflect that. So I don't think it's fair to take somebody who's, you know, 50 pounds overweight, oh, look, you store a lot around your belly.

Let's test your hormones. Wow, your cortisol is all over the place. Here's this medication to fix your cortisol, right? Why don't we say you're not exercising? Let's start doing a little bit of activity. Let's look at your diet. Okay, it looks like you're not consuming adequate protein. it looks like you're consuming a lot of heavily processed foods.

Let's work on that a little bit. Wow, let's look at your sleep. Your sleep doesn't look very good. You're not averaging about eight hours a night. You go to bed at different times during the week. You wake up at different times. You're using maybe too many stimulants. I can make a long list here.

We don't do that. Instead, we say, oh, your hormone. Like if you're a man, I'll use a different example. You're a man, you go to the, you go get your testosterone levels check. Oh, look, you have low testosterone. Let's put you on testosterone replacement therapy. You'll feel better, but it's a bad. Band-Aid if that man is not exercising, has a poor diet and poor sleep.

Like if you fix those, 80% of men will see a significant improvement in their testosterone levels. So I don't like that message. I've worked with people for decades. I've worked with hormone doctors. Changing lifestyle often moves things in the right direction and often takes care of those problems, trying to take care of those problems with Band-Aid solutions. like hormones or supplements, you'll notice some positive effects in terms of how you feel,

but it's not really fixing the problem. So if cortisol is causing your body fat to store body, your body to store body fat in a way that is different than a way that it used to, changing your lifestyle, not only will make you leaner anyway, but should reverse that. Yeah, I think the other part that feels a little disingenuous with it is that even the people that have nothing to sell, what feels disingenuous is that. hey, the reason that we're all as a society so fat is because we're so stressed out. And that's what's causing the cortisol levels.

But if we put you in a all expenses paid retreat for the entire year, but just kept on feeding you excess calories and excess calories from especially ultra-processed foods, you're still going to gain weight, no matter even if your cortisol levels are in the ideal situation. Yeah, you know what's interesting about stress. First of all, you need stress. So we need to stop demonizing stress. Stress is a, it signals the body to adapt. Okay, so exercise is stress.

If you took a blood test on me or anybody else, post workout and you didn't know I exercised, you would think, uh-oh, this is not good. We got inflammatory markers going up and something's wrong with this person. We need to make sure we get them to the hospital. It's a little good because you didn't know I exercised, okay? sunlight is a stress you know eating there are components in food

that have a hormetic effect that cause you become healthier because they're a stress you need some in fact sauna cold water immersion um behavior specialists will tell you this

we need challenge in life to feel some kind of meaning okay people think if we were given everything we ever needed and we live these plush lifestyles that we would suddenly feel amazing. You know, look, here's all the evidence you need, okay? It's the year, you know, we're in the, we're in an advanced age, okay?

More people have more stuff than they've ever had. More people have shelter and food and clothes. We have too much stuff. And yet, anxiety is higher, depression is higher. Like, what is going on here? It's not the stress. It's how we handle the stress. stress. It's how we perceive the stress. It's a lack of meaning and purpose in our lives that's

causing the problem. It's not the, that we have necessarily too much. We might have too much stress for how we handle it, but we also need to look at how, like for example, let's talk about physical stress. Okay. If you exercise regularly and you're fit, your body can handle physical stress more than somebody who's not fit and healthy. If you took it. If you took a lot of somebody who's sedentary and you took someone who's fit and you stress their body out by having them, let's say, walk 20 miles, you'll notice that the fit person, they're probably going to feel okay. The person who doesn't, it would be too much. Walking 20 miles will be too much. They might even get an injury as a result. This is true for emotional, spiritual stress as well. And so it's far more

complex is what I'm trying to say. I don't have the answers, but what I'm trying to say is it's far more complex than we just have too much stress in our life. You know what's funny about that? I'm the product of poor immigrants. Okay. You know, I talked to my grandfather passed away, but I remember when I used to talk to him about how he grew up. You know, nine siblings.

They grew up in a room probably as big as this that they shared with the donkey that his dad owned because that's how he was able to provide for the family. they were extremely poor. At nine years old, he was working hard labor. He came to this country, had to figure it out. And, you know, if I went to him and I said, you know, hey, no, no, man, I'm really stressed out. You know what I did today?

I talked on three podcasts and we talked about health and fit. I'm, man, I'm so stressed out. Like, I would feel embarrassed to tell him that. Like, what's the difference? you know, I think they had a tighter community. I think they had values. I think they had a lot of meaning and purpose in their life. So not to shame anybody.

And obviously, yes, I still feel stressed myself. I just think it's a lot more complex than we have too much stress in our lives. You know, honestly, you know what helps me a lot? If I don't go on my phone all day long, I feel like I can handle so much more stress. You know, how interesting is that? Yeah, it almost seems like a lot of our chronic stress is coming from over-stimulation. Totally.

You know, I think back in the day, and your family's from Italy. Yeah, Sicily. Yeah. Do you know the story of Rosetta? No. The story of Rosetta? No. Tesla, let's bring this up.

So Rosetta, in the 1960s, there was a group of Italian immigrants that moved together to the United States. And they ended up in this town in Pennsylvania. And they literally ended up kind of recreating like an Italian village. You have all these families that are living with multi-jave. generations in the same, you know, home, probably with a little bit more space than maybe many of them had, like, the one room in Sicily or whatever. And they're living a traditional way of life within the American context. Many of them are starting to get jobs at different factories.

They're farming, other things like that. And one of the local doctors who was servicing that town and a little neighboring town because they were very small, he was at a conference one day getting a beer at like a local bar. And he was telling a researcher that he was sitting next to, he was like, you know, it's crazy. I'm like the doctor for this town, Rosetta, in Pennsylvania. There has not been one person under the age of 65 that has died from cardiovascular disease. And this was the time that now cardiovascular disease was just starting to become more known,

Time Magazine, all these articles, you know, fat is causing heart disease. And the researcher was like, this is super interesting. We got to like look into this. We got to look into what's going on. So they started starting to town. They're like, okay, is it the water that they're drinking? Is it the food? And at that point in time, they were eating still a lot of the traditional meals,

but the food had already started changing in getting a lot more American meals and stuff because it's all they had access to. 1960s, like even to find olive oil in America is super hard. So they're eating just whatever. they can get access to. And then as they continued to study them and look at them, the next generation that was there, the 70s, you started to have for the first time people under the age of 65 in that town would die from cardiovascular disease. And that study continued and ultimately what they found is that it wasn't the food. It wasn't the water. It was essentially

the way that they were living. That in these towns, when they first moved here from Italy, you had multiple people in the same house that were there. You had these tight community bonds and these family relationships. The average male, when they first came here in the 60s, I believe, he was part of like three kind of different social groups that were there. And as increasingly people started to become more Americanized, they stopped living in the same home.

They were distant from their sort of families. they weren't as social, didn't have as much downtime, weren't spending as much time outside. And all of a sudden, this idea of sociogenomics, how we live our friendships and how tight our bonds on our relationships played a massive role. And this goes back to this idea that, you know, you mentioned when you stay away from your phone, you feel better. I think that those generations, even though they had a tougher life, right, they had less stimulation.

They weren't as overstimulated. and they also had tighter bonds. They had tighter family bonds. They had more downtime and they had more support system that was there. It was such a fascinating effect that researchers coined the term

the Rosetta effect. The way that you live could have that much of an impact on your healthy lifestyle. If humans or anything were social animals, we're so social. If you really think about it,

it's amazing how social we are. It's considered cruel and inhuman, punishment to take a POW and put them in isolation. That's a Geneva Convention, that that's cruel, to put them in isolation. We need each other. And what we've done is we've effectively separated ourselves so significantly. This is probably one of the main reasons why we're seeing all these issues with anxiety,

with stress. we don't feel a sense of shared values or community and our phones are really a cheap substitute they're the processed food of connection you know Arthur Brooks, good friend of mine who's an expert on this he says that the you talk to somebody through social media you get the dopamine but you don't get the oxytocin so it's not the same it's literally not the same

I'll use an example that because people might think like we've been so conditioned to think that it's everything else and that that doesn't play a huge role. I'll use another example that tends to blow people away. Somewhat connected, but what age do you think people have, when they do surveys, what age do people have the best body acceptance where they like their bodies? Hmm. I would probably have to guess later years, like 50 plus? You're on it.

Yeah, it's like 60s. Wow. You know, people would say, well, I mean, should be your early 20s. That's when you're young and you look the best. No, no, no. People are most satisfied with their bodies in their 60s. Now, why is that?

Because it's not, has less to do with how you look. It has more to do with the wisdom that comes with, I think, getting older. I think, look, I was, you know, I was, I'm a child of the 90s, okay? I remember waiting in line at the grocery store. and you just had to stand there. You ever wait in line now? Everybody's on their phone. There is no quiet time.

There is no time to, this is why spiritual practices, one of the reasons across the board have health benefits. I think a lot of it, not all of it, there's other things, but I think a lot of it has to do

with the, you know, being present, centering yourself, being quiet. I mean, that's what prayer is, right? That's what meditation is. So, yeah, putting your phone down, I think makes a big, and the data now is starting to come out on the effects of social media and technology on kids.

We didn't have this data because it just exploded onto the scene. And we're seeing very negative effects. Here's the interesting thing. As I'm saying this, because I know I feel this when I hear it, people are like, oh, put my phone down. That should be a sign right there. When I tell you, put your phone down and you're like, oh, I don't know if I want to do. That's hard.

Yeah. Well, that's a sign right there. Try doing it. Turn it off. Put it down. and then just take note of how you feel. It's the ultimate distraction tool. We're constantly being bombarded.

Our phones are extensions of markets. And again, I said this earlier, markets give us what we want, not what we need? What do our primitive brains want? We want to be scared. We want to be alarmed. We want to be shocked.

We want to compare to other people. Look at your algorithm on your social media. Look at all the pictures that pop up. Is that really healthy for you? If you really think about it, probably not. You know, my space, the fitness space is notorious for this. People today, I'll tell you a stat that tends to blow people away. Did you know that six-pack abs are more rare than millionaires?

It's more rare to have a six-pack than it is to be a millionaire. Now you go on social media, you wouldn't think that at all. You think everybody has a six-pack. Look, I worked in gyms my entire life. That's a self-selection bias of fit people. Six-packs are rare, okay? They're very, very rare. But you wouldn't think so.

You would go on social media and think, oh, my God, everybody's beautiful. Everybody looks perfect. And now with AI, it's going to get much worse. Like, turn it off or change your algorithm. Watch what happens to your mental health and your stress and your anxiety. So again, this is my expertise is in fitness and health. I've only, I'd say over the last five years, we've dive deep into this because health, as I've learned, as I've done this longer and longer, isn't just exercise and diet. It's a lot of things.

And I've had people on my show that are experts in this. And it is 100% true. You know, now in my 40s, I'm practicing this. I'm like, man, I wish I knew this when I was younger. It's having profound effects on myself. I wish I knew this, you know, years ago. You know, you were talking about body acceptance, how people 50 plus, 60 plus, you have the deepest level of body acceptance.

And I think that comes with the wisdom of like, look, this is who I am. And like, everything I'm not made me everything that I am. and like I need to appreciate myself and, you know, there's a lot of good that comes with it. Sure, I might want to make progress. And actually, that's the next thing that I want to get into. Another mind-blowing thing that I learned from you is, I'll pull up the quote that I heard you say in another podcast. He said, the most profound changes I've ever seen in clients when they follow, which you teach,

dialing in the nutrition piece and most importantly the strain training component. The most profound changes I've ever seen in clients are the clients that I work with that over the age of 65. Yeah. Can you talk a little bit more about that? Yeah. So when you're, people who come to me who are younger, let's say, tend to come to me for the following.

I want to get lean. I want to look good. I want to look attractive. Okay. And I get that. I started exercising for or working out for similar reasons. And that's okay. There's nothing wrong with that.

But as you pursue, here's something that isn't communicated enough. Fitness is an incredible, the pursuit of fitness is an incredible vehicle for personal growth. It's partially because it's unassuming. So you come to me and you're like, I just want to get bigger biceps, right? So you don't know you're about to embark on this journey of personal growth. But if you stick to it long enough, that's exactly what it is. Because you start out saying I want bigger biceps. But if you stick to it long enough, at some point, you're like, okay, I'm not going to look like

that guy on the cover of the magazine, but I'm going to keep doing this. And you're like, you know what? Bigger biceps is cool. but I like the way I feel even more. And then you keep going, you're like, I just like the process of the discipline of doing this. There seems to be something to it. So it's this incredible vehicle for personal growth.

People over 65, they would come to me. And yeah, you know, they would say things like, I want to lose weight and, you know, I want to maybe look better. But really, it's like, I just want to feel better. I want to be able to move better. Like, I want to be able to play with my grandkids. So their goals are in a better place. I want to get up without struggling to get up from the couch and needing assistance.

I want to walk up the stairs without risk of falling down. You know what's crazy. And coaches and trainers who've been doing this for a long time will, they'll echo this. Where it's really wild is you really only see what you're trying to look at. So when I get a client who wants to lose 30 pounds, one of the keys to being an effective coach and training is what I teach other trainers and coaches is I say, help them connect the dots to all the other things that are happening, not just. the weight loss because people don't even realize. I don't want to lose 30 pounds, right? And then they won't even connect the dots to the fact that I'm sleeping better. Oh my God, I'm in a better mood. I've got more energy. My skin looks better. My digestion is better.

They don't even pay attention to those things unless you connect the dots as a trainer. And I would do this to people. I'd come in and you know, you're not going to lose 30 pounds in two months, right? So they'd come in and they'd lose a little bit of weight. But I'd say to them like, how was your sleep? And they'd say things like, ah, you know, now that you mention it, my sleep is a lot better. Wow, that's weird. How's your energy? Wow, that's weird. You know, I'm drinking one less coffee a day. I'm just feeling a lot better. And then they'd start to really connect the dots to all these incredible effects that becoming more healthy and fit can provide them. Now, if I don't do that, and we just focus on the weight loss, I've lost them. I'm putting them on a path towards

at some point giving up. Even if they lose the 30 pounds, they're going to gain it back at some point. when you get someone who's older, they've already probably experienced loss of mobility, loss of freedom, health issues that are a bit scary. So then they come to me and they're like, okay, I need to feel better. We start exercising. And then they come back and they're like, I mean, these are real quotes. These are real things that people have said to me. Sal, I reached up to the top cupboard to get glasses and it was easy. Like I couldn't really reach up there without having shoulder pain.

Or they'd say something to me like, I got up at him. chair without asking for help. Like I always have to ask for help. I'm getting up out of my chair by myself. Or, you know, I went traveling, that suitcase, I put it up in the overhead compartment. And I didn't even real. It was so easy. I couldn't believe it. Or I got down on the floor to play with my grandkids and it was okay. Like that is profound. That's life changing. And they would just, they would be so consistent because they were connecting the dots with things that really move the needle, really make a difference. By the way, you know, with the same. You know, with the side effect of all that is, they would lose weight.

Wow. They'd get leaner, right? Then they'd come back, oh, I'm losing weight. This is really weird. I feel great. Didn't even care about losing weight anymore, but now it's starting to happen. So also, this also is another part of it is you take a 25-year-old that's fit and you compare them to a 25-year-old that's, you know, does an exercise. And there's a difference between them, okay? But you take a 65-year-old that's fit and you compare them to the average 65-year-old and it's a completely different universe. And you move up that scale of age, you take an 80-year-old that's fit

versus the typical 80-year-old, and it's the difference between 17 medications, full-time care to complete independence, no medications. Like that is massive. So the older you get, the bigger the changes, the more profound of an impact fitness plays on your life. You know, we're recording in Los Angeles,

and, you know, the mecca of bodybuilding is out here at Gold's Gym. And a lot of times people hear Gold's Gym and they feel like, oh my gosh, I'm going to be intimidated, you know, I'm not fit enough. I'm not look a particular way. And I always encourage them because I'll work out there, you know, every so often with the few buddies that train there. And I say, no, no, no, listen, even if you don't have a membership, just go for a day

and especially work outside in the front. And the reason why you're going to see something that you is going to blow your mind, almost, especially in the morning, if you go around like 8 or 9 a.m., almost half of the people that are working out there are probably in the 50 plus crowd with at least on any given day, like three to four people who are above the age of 80, at least another three to four that are 70, and probably another dozen that are 65 plus. And they are just individuals who have, you're not going to look at them and say, oh, this guy was a former competitive bodybuilder. They just look like, you know, you would never guess that they were their age.

You probably are going to think that they're at least 20 years younger. And then you ask them their age and they're like, oh, yeah, I'm 82. And you're like, how the hell are you 82? And you literally look like you just turned 60. Yeah. And it's truly that mindset and the protective muscle and working out and just being consistent. And they're not lifting crazy amount of weights. but they're doing things that their counterparts just down the street.

I went and volunteered a few years ago, and I went to a retirement home just down the street from there. It was where Ronald Reagan was held up. It was a memory care center. And you go down there, and these are people that, unfortunately, have dementia, Alzheimer's. And not only is their brain not in top shape because of what they're suffering from with these brain disorders,

which is super unfortunate, but many of them are their body's not in a good shape. They need wheelchairs. They are on canes. They're on walkers. They need assistance. And it's the big contrast between people who are consistent about strength training and don't let it go. And individuals, for a combination of different reasons, have to have let that go and cannot

work out on a regular basis. Yeah. So let me call on that. First thing I want to say is if you've never been to a gym, it can be intimidating. Like I said, I've run gyms, I've owned gyms for two and a half decades. And I will, this is 100% true. Anybody who works out regularly or who owns a gym or works in a gym will tell you this. It's the most accepting place you'll ever go in your entire life.

If you go in there and work out, you can be surrounded by the most hardcore athletes, bodybuilders, power lifters, scary looking people, you know, grunting and yelling. They are so accepting. You tap them on the shoulder. Hey, can you? Oh, yeah, absolutely. Let me help you out. Let me show you.

It is an incredible place because everybody there either, started where you were, or they just respect the work because they do it themselves. So it's an amazing environment. And I have to say that because I've seen articles recently that try to paint gyms as these unaccepting intolerant place. In fact, my good friend, Father Steve, he's a priest. He runs the production for Bishop Barron. And he also works out.

And he told me, he goes, the church has a lot to learn from gyms. He goes, man, I go in there. He goes, they don't care. What you look like? Where you come from? Who you pray do? It's like they're so accepting because we're all here trying to better ourselves. So I want to say that to encourage people.

It seems intimidating. Trust me. Go in there and you'll see. And by the way, the most accepting ones are the most hardcore gyms, which you wouldn't think. The ones that seem the most scary. So, all right. So yes, it's incredibly protective. It's incredibly healthy.

It's incredibly good for you. But here's kind of how I want to hammer that home. Your body will only. ever be as strong and as fit and as healthy as it thinks it needs to be. Our bodies evolved to be incredibly efficient with energy. For most of the human history, food was scarce. So one of the primary drivers of evolution for humans was how do we survive in scarcity? How do we survive around the scarcity?

And one of the side effects or effects of that was if we don't use it, we lose it. That's an old saying in fitness, right? So here's this energy expensive tissue called muscle. We're only going to keep it if we need it. Otherwise, it makes no sense. Like, why would I have a V10, you know, six-liter engine truck if I only need to cruise at 25 miles an hour all day long and haul nothing? Like, that's wasting gas, essentially, is what your body's saying. So it will only keep you as strong as you need to be and it will continue to adapt in that direction if that's what you present it with. So if as you get older, you become less and less active, your body is going to continue to meet that and adapt that way. So this is why, ask any doctor in the field, you take a patient

who's having trouble walking, they know if they put them on a walker, they're going to, they're going to decline even faster. You take someone who is having strength and mobility issues, they sit down more, their health is going to decline even faster. They know this. Doctors will tell you this. Like we only, and this is relatively recent, they'll say, We'll have you use a walker if necessary, but we would prefer you strengthen your body to try to not to use them because we know your body will shape and mold it and adapt to that walker. And that's what ends up happening. So you have to give your body a reason to maintain vitality and strength and mobility.

And if you're not doing that, your body will adapt in that way. And look, for anybody who's ever had a cast on a body part, you ever break a leg or an arm and have a cast on it? What does that arm or leg look like when you take it off 30 days later? That muscle is gone. I don't care how old you are. I remember when I had it. I dislocated my knee as a kid, took the cast off.

And I freaked out when I looked at my leg because it was like the muscle was gone. Luckily came back because I was moving and active. But your body will adapt. So if you tell your body, we don't need mobility. We don't need strength. I don't need vitality. I don't need lots of cognitive function. it's going to start to decline.

By the way, we separate the brain and the mind from the body, but it's the body. Your brain is in your body. Your mind is a result of lots of different things, but one of them is a healthy brain. If you allow your body to become unhealthy, your brain becomes unhealthy. It's a part of your body. It's all the same. So look at the connection between dementia and diabetes, obesity, mobility issues, very strong connection, very strong connection. very strong connection.

So you want to keep a sharp mind, keep a healthy brain, keep a healthy body. It's really that simple. Now, I do also want to say because MySpace communicates this terribly, you don't need to beat the crap out of yourself.

You don't need to be, by the way, top athletes don't even work like this, work out like this all the time. The problem is we look at social media or, you know, when I was a kid, look at magazines, nobody's going to highlight their normal workouts. You know, when I post my workouts,

even on social media. I'm not showing you how I normally work out. I'm going to post my PRs, right? The ones I want to show off. That's not how I work out all the time. The way you should train 80 to 90% of the time is cruising. There's that 10% of the time where you're pushing. That's about it.

Even pro athletes train that way. They have an in-season and they have an off-season. So when you go train yourself, train yourself appropriately. Most of your workouts should make you feel good, not like you beat the crap out of yourself. So if you're watching and listening to this, and like, God, last time I tried to work out, I couldn't walk for three days, or I took that class and I almost threw up.

Not appropriate. You should feel more energized after your workout. You should feel some challenge, but it should be appropriate to your current fitness level. So if you're doing nothing now, just do a little more than you're doing now, and that's enough to elicit change. If you get super fit, well, yeah, your workouts are going to have to be much harder to elicit any further change. But it needs to be appropriate.

Too much is not only not appropriate. not only will it not get you there faster, but it might even reverse your progress. So there's a myth, you know, if I work out harder, I get results faster. No, if you work out too hard, you won't get there at all. Yeah, you see so many people feel like, if I do not leave the workout dripping in sweat,

I didn't achieve anything. Terrible, terrible. And we promote that, right? You go on, you look at fitness gurus and influencers, and they make you think that every workout is like one that you need to survive. No, no, that's crazy. If I train my clients like that, I would have had no success as a trainer,

both with clients that got great results and were able to maintain them forever and just as a business person. Any trainer watching this right now, if you're a trainer or coach, and you beat the crap out of your clients all the time, you're not going to last, I promise you. You're going to have clients that are going to drop like flies. Most workouts need to make you feel good. So you should leave the workout feeling better than you did walking into it,

not feeling like you just survived. That's 100% fact. And I'll stand by that all day long. And every good trainer and coach will back me up. Are there any other core principles like that? You know, you chatted about that a little bit last time. But just while we're on this topic, other things that you think are sort of key mistakes when people say, okay, listen, I know I want to prioritize fitness to build muscle.

Muscle has all these protective elements, which you've talked about, including deeply linked to longevity, cancer protection, etc., etc. Other couple of handful of mistakes that you feel that people are making once they go down that route. So the first one was either you use it or you lose it, right? So just so many people don't even start because they're intimidated and they're like, oh, it's too late. I wish I started my 40s and people were 40.

I wish I started my 20s and, you know, so on and so forth. Second one was, you know, not thinking that, a good or a successful workout is you beating yourself up every single time and being completely dead, right? I think a lot of fitness classes also, they become popular, especially in cities like L.A. or San Francisco or other places because people are like, oh, my gosh, that workout killed me, right? That was like a killer workout.

And it's like a challenging thing for all their friends to, you know, do together. Any other handful of things you'd add into that? Yeah. So let me, first let me cover that. That shared suffering can definitely, it can feel cathartic. when the reason you're working out is because you hate the way you look and you hate yourself.

So that's why it feels so good, by the way. So someone watching right now is like, I love those workouts that make me feel like I'm going to throw up. Probably because you look in the mirror and said to yourself, I hate myself. Wow. I'm gross. I'm unattractive.

I'm not sexy. So that painful beat yourself up workout was cathartic. But I'm going to tell you something right now. Keep that up long enough and you'll hate it. And you'll rebel. And the rebellion is going to look like you're not going to work out at all. same thing with diet if you diet because you hate yourself

then diet becomes restrictive and it becomes a punishment and at first it feels good I don't deserve to eat that I eat like crap all the time I'm gonna eat this way well at some point you rebel you know what it looks like it doesn't look like you go off your diet a little bit looks like you go way off your diet if you track how people who approach diet that way what it looks like when they go off they don't eat one cookie they do box of cookies and they feel terrible afterwards so it's literally rebellion against that

hating yourself model. So number one, work out because you love yourself because you deserve to be healthy. You deserve to be cared for. Go to the gym or do your exercise or eat because you want to care for yourself. And that'll lead you in the right direction. Okay. Here's something that will probably blow people's minds, but it's 100% true. And I'll make the case.

It's more effective to work out a little bit every day than it is to work out a lot. a couple days a week. Even if everything's controlled, everything's the same. It's more effective. And here's number one reason why. Habits are better formed when we do them regularly versus when we do them sporadically. Our bodies also adapt better that way.

And all growth is a form of adaptation. Even learning is a form of adaptation. So if I ask you, if I had you learn a language and you went to one class, that was seven hours long once a week versus you did one hour a day, which one do you think would impact you more positively? Yeah, one hour a day. That's right.

So if you want to really hack this, this is what you do. Get a pair of dumbbells or some resistance bands, keep them in your house or maybe a suspension trainer. That's also pretty versatile. And instead of going to the gym twice a week for 45 minutes a day or whatever, do 10 to 15 minutes a day, every day. go do two exercises. That's it.

Two. Today I'm going to do squats and I'm going to do some push-ups. Tomorrow I'm going to do overhead press and I'm going to do some deadlifts. The next thing I'm going to do some crunches and I'm going to do some hip thrust. That's it. 10 to 15 minutes a day. It's more effective psychologically. The behaviors will develop faster.

It'll feel more like a habit and it's going to solidify faster. It's more convenient. all the busy people, the executives, the people who are really truly like working crazy hours, it's easier for them to find 15 minutes a day than it is for them to find an hour twice a week. That's just a fact. People are at home with their kids, same thing.

You tell a mom or dad who's at home with the kids, can you make time to go to the gym two or three days a week for an hour? I'm like, oh, I got to plan this out, maybe find a babysitter. But if I say to, hey, can you do like 10, 15 minutes a day? Oh, yeah, I could do that. I could totally do that. So it's far easier to stay consistent.

Also, the data suggests that the body adapts better that way as well, that the body actually adapts better with small doses than they do to less frequent larger doses when it comes to strength training in particular. Fatigue is a strength training. It counters a lot of the benefits of strength training. And that's why you do sets, by the way. This is why people who, when you do strength training properly, you do a set and you rest. when fatigue sets in, it stops becoming strength training, it becomes more cardiovascular training. So that might be another reason why. So yeah, try that out.

So literally two exercises a day, 10 to 15 minutes, keep the intensity moderate. Watch what happens to your body. It will literally trip you out. And it also feels better because 10 to 15 minutes feels invigorating. 45 minutes can sometimes feel a little bit like too much work. So when I turned 40, which was last year, I got serious about strength training, building muscle mass, and started making it a regular part of my routine and was very consistent for like nine months, took a little tiny break this summer, traveling, other things like that, but was working out three to four days a week, feel so much more confident in the gym, body composition, totally transformed and put on about, you know, almost about nine pounds of lean muscle mass in the process and dropped a bunch of body, um, of body composition. fat percentage as well. So now I'm at a different place than when I was starting. So I want to kind of go through a few different cohorts of people. So for that person that is literally like, okay, yes, I know,

I saw you the first time on the podcast. I've been watching your content. I like the idea of, you know, 10 to 15 minutes every day. I got the dumbbells. What's the best way for them to put or follow some sort of program? Because you hear them, you hear individuals saying, I literally don't even know what to do. Yeah. Right. So are there self-guided things? Do you? you recommend that they follow stuff on YouTube? Have you guys a mind pump put together sort of introductory programs for people? Yeah. So we put it, we have a program called Maps 15, which is 15 minutes a day.

And it uses a suspension trainer to keep it convenient. There is an advanced version that uses free weights as well for people who like. What's a suspension trainer? Suspension, like a TRX. Okay, got it. Yeah. So you literally, you could, I mean, I mean, God, they're, now you can get them on Amazon for like, I think, 50 bucks.

And you can hook it over your door or something stable. and then you have, and the thing about suspension trainers are really cool is they're appropriate for beginners all the way to advance. Because you change the angle and it can make, I can make a push-up super, super beginner, or I can make it very advanced for somebody who's really strong, just simply by changing the angle of the handle. So the super appropriate, very convenient. So you can follow a program like Maps 15, very easy, convenient. If you don't want to invest in a program, you want to kind of try it out, literally pick one, to two exercises and just practice those and try to change them up each time you work out. The best exercises to pick from are some type of a squatting movement.

There's lots of variations of squats. Okay. But some type of a squatting movement, some type of a horizontal pressing movement, push up, a bench press, a dumbbell press, a band press, something like that. Some type of an overhead or vertical pressing movement. So like an overhead dumbbell press or with bands or something like that. Some type of a pulling movement, a row would be a great example. There's lots of variations of different kinds of rows.

And something that involves stabilization of the core or something with rotation. So like a plank or a crunch or what's called a chop with a band. And that's it. And there's lots of variations of those. So you can pick from those five or six movements. pick two of them, do them on that on Monday, pick another two, do that I'm on Tuesday, pick another two, do them on Wednesday, and just kind of cycle through. Now, Maps 15 is much more meticulously programmed and does make a difference,

but if you're just getting started, you'll do fine by just doing what I said, where you just pick a couple exercises. It really isn't that crazy. And then focus on technique. So you are doing skills. so don't think that the end is, you know, I need to have sore legs or I need to feel a burn in this muscle. Don't think of it that way. Imagine you're practicing a sport.

So I'm telling you to free throw in one day and I'm telling you to throw a three-point or another day. I'm telling you to dribble. If I were telling you to practice the dribble, you wouldn't just dribble until you're fatigued. You would practice the technique. So treat this like techniques. Okay, so Sal said a squat. I'm going to do a bodyweight squat. Don't just do them until you're tired.

watch yourself in the mirror, pull up a video on YouTube. We have mind pump TV. We have every exercise I just listed is on there. You can watch us teach it. And then practice and perfect that movement. Work within your capability. So if you go too low and it hurts, that's okay. Don't go that low then.

And then each time you practice, see if you can go a little lower. Okay. Practice and perfect the technique that what I just said right now will guide most people for a while before they need any further. type of programming. Yeah, like literally people could probably do that for at least six months or a year. Totally. And not only see results, but feel more confident to get to like the next level.

Oh, they'll see great results within that period. Like great results. You'll get stronger, especially in the first year. Your mobility, connection, control, and strength will improve almost weekly for probably the first year if you just did that. So every week you'll notice like, oh, that feels easier. Wow, I did another rep. I could go a little lower.

Wow, that feels really good. So barring any injury or anything like that, yeah, you'll see progress. They call them newbie gains in the fitness world. So that's 10 to 15 minutes every day. That's it. Right? Seven days a week?

Yeah, six or seven is perfectly fine. I like seven just because it keeps the momentum. If you don't beat yourself up and you do what I just said, it'll be appropriate for most people because you'll self-gauge the intensity based on your fitness level. I personally like to start the day that way. less things get in the way. So it's like wake up and do them.

But any time of the day is perfectly fine. You touched on this last time, but you are a big fan of making sure that especially, if you can, starting off your morning with protein. Yeah. Do you want to habit stack that along with these sort of newbie gains that somebody might be getting from practicing some of these resistant?

I love what you just said about habit stacking. Habit stacking is a behavioral approach to trying to implement and new skill or behavior. And what you do is you attach it to something that you already do. So if I said, you know, I want you to walk for 30 minutes a day versus walk for 10 minutes after breakfast, lunch, and dinner. What you'll find is people will be more consistent if they do it with breakfast, if they attach it to the thing that they already do.

Okay. So if you need to do that, that's great. So if you do the two exercises and you're like, you know, I think it's better off if I do one exercise after breakfast and one after lunch, okay, perfectly fine. Really, there's no, I don't care how you put it together. It doesn't make a difference. But habit stacking is a phenomenal way to do it. Attaching it to waking up and making a part of your morning routine is just another way

of doing that. You could do it before bed too. I just find that to be more challenging for people typically. So if they wanted to incorporate the protein aspect of it, you know, what do you tell your clients. Now we're kind of combining dietary interventions to improve satiety, which is a big part of what you were talking about last time, higher protein diets, what they have impact on. So a lot of people are not used to sort of or have questions about like, wow, like, you know, how do I mentally sort of wrap my head around sort of starting to include more protein diet?

Yeah, yeah. So if you do this in the morning, you're probably better off eating afterwards. I know that people will say eat before or whatever. And there's personal preference here, but I would eat afterwards. And what they find, the data shows that when people exercise and regularly, they're more likely to make better food choices. I think it's just you're in that same mentality. But yeah, back to the protein. Starting your day off with protein has been shown to reduce cravings and control blood sugar

throughout the day better regardless of what else you eat. So if everything's the same, but this person, eats more of their protein in the morning, this person doesn't, you're less likely to have cravings, energy crashes, irritability, all the things associated with blood sugar spikes and drops. Also, when I mentioned high protein diet, I should have gone into the details. High protein, the way I define it or the way that the data defines it, is about a gram of protein per pound of target body weight. So take whatever your target body weight is, aim for that in grams of protein.

that's not easy to do. So I want people to know, protein is very satiety producing. So if you're 130 pound female and let's say your target body weight is 120 pounds, eating 120 grams of protein you'll find is going to really crush your appetite. So you want to eat a good amount of it in the morning. Otherwise you play, you're behind the eight ball. So 120 grams of protein, divide that by three meals. You have your, you know, your 40 grams of protein or whatever for breakfast.

Eat that first. If you don't, you'll find it's going to be really challenging throughout the day. Protein shakes can be helpful at, you know, meeting those needs, but I always encourage people to get this through whole natural foods. By the way, protein shakes are processed foods. So, you know, all the health food categories of processed foods are still processed foods. In fact, the top selling health foods are the ones that taste the best, and that'll tell you a lot about that market.

Yeah. Yeah, number one seller at Whole Foods in the food section is pizza. Yeah, of course, right, right, right. Or the best tasting protein shake, right? Yeah. So let's say somebody's been doing that, whether it's that program, they've been doing that for about a year, they've starting to notice these gains, or they've been doing something on their own, something similarly.

And they're like, you know what? I want to now kick it up a notch. And it's a journey and a lifestyle that I want to embark to really sort of get into the best shape of my life, not from a standpoint of like, oh, I want like six-pack abs or I want this, but I want to feel strong and I want to continue to feel strong as I age, but also maintain the mobility, flexibility, et cetera. You know, what kind of program should that person be thinking about now to be embarking on? If this, the Maps 15, which we have the link into the show notes, people can check it out on the Mind Pump website. What kind of program should that individual

we looking at? And do they need to be thinking about working with like a personal trainer? Yeah. So, oh, okay, I'm glad you said that. A good trainer or coach is worth their weight in gold, okay? Because fitness and nutrition are, especially nutrition, they can be very challenging things to change and implement and keep on a consistent basis. And a good trainer or coach isn't just somebody that has knowledge on exercise and diet, but they're also really good guides. They're going to guide you on this journey. And a good trainer. coach or trainer's goal is to get you to be able to do this on your own for the rest of your life. Okay.

So when you hire somebody that's really good, the success rates with really good trainers and coaches is the best, period. End of story. So, and you don't need to work with them all the time. You could do like once a week or, you know, twice a month. Obviously, if you worked with them, every time you worked out even better. But they're worth their weight in gold. So I highly suggest finding someone who's good, hiring them.

They'll be able to coach you through this process. Okay. So let's say you start with the 15 minutes a day. there's so much you can do within that 15 minutes before you have to move to anything more advanced that you'll be okay for a long time. So like, for example, increase the amount of reps. That can happen for a while, right? Increase the load.

Well, I went from body weight squats to higher rep body weight squats to holding dumbbells for body weight squats to putting a barbell on my back with body weight squats and then adding more weight to the bar. Like, we could go a long way with just that, right? It could be, I could only squat down this deep. Now I'm squatting on this deep. Now I can go down all the way. So the ways you could advance your workouts within the context of what I just said, you could take that for years before you do anything else like add more exercises or add more frequency or anything like that.

And I want to be very clear with that because I think people, they'll do something like that, be like, okay, I'm ready. And they think that the next step is some crazy progression into something. else. It's, it's, you could go, I train people for years, uh, where they would start with me two days a week and we would work out for five years progressing with that before I moved them to three days a week. So it's not as crazy as you think. And what you'll find is the, if you do this right and you work with your body, the progressions are not going to be that hard to figure out. Literally, you'll be like, hmm, I did 10. I think I could do 12. Now I did 12. Now I think you could do 14. Now I'm

hold a dumbbell. Now I'm going to do it a little faster, whatever, or slower or pause at the bottom just to increase or, you know, make the challenge more. But, you know, we have, I think we offer now something like 17 or 18 different programs that you could choose from. A trainer will help put one together for you that's individualized. Nothing will beat that. So people go and sign up online and they have like a virtual consultation with a trainer or is it? No, so we just sell programs. Sell programs. Yeah. So you can just go on there. Oh, yeah. Buy a program. Yeah. And even in Maps 15, there's so with the suspension trainer you could progress the suspension trainer to make it more and more check look i'm going to give you an example okay so we created maps 15 uh partially because we saw a need

for people who just have a tough time carving out 45 minutes or an hour to go to the gym also the data on frequency when all other controls are taking care of uh showed that it was more effective you look you see this with uh like olympic lifters they're they're practicing exercises super frequently versus doing one long, super hard type of workout. I also experimented with this myself. When we created Maps 15, I did a more advanced version where I would spend about 25 minutes and I use barbells and dumbbells, but still 25 minutes a day. And I posted it on my social media.

At 43 years old, I hit a PR in deadlift, like stronger than I was in my early 30s when I hit the previous PR. So there's a lot you could do with what I just said. And it's funny because we create that program. We have advanced people following it. And they're like, I didn't think I'd get better results than I did what I was doing before, but I must have been doing too much. And I'm getting far better results.

So think about it this way. If I told you to dig a hole as fast as you could, you could use a spoon and work real hard, but you'd probably be smarter if you got a shovel or got a backhoe to the workforce. So a good workout is just that. It's effective. A good workout isn't necessarily. the harder one or the longer one.

What about things that you do yourself or with clients that are now the bonus on top of the foundation, right? You've already covered some of the foundational things in this episode. We did a lot on the previous episode as well. You know, not eating excess calories, especially from ultra-process foods. It's going to be hard to peel back from how addictive that lifestyle is and it's just going to cause us to eat more, focusing on whole foods, prioritizing protein for the satiety, as well as for the muscle building component, and then your recommendations for resistance training

at some cadence, depending on where you're starting in how this is following. Are there things now, for those are listening, because we have people of all different sort of cohorts that are following along, that are like, hey, look, I'm looking for now the optimization category. Are there classification that you now either have an approach or a recommendation on the rabbit hole that people can go under. So let's start with the first one. Let's talk about like therapeutics, right? Are you a fan of peptides or any additional components that people could be looking at now? Again, when they have a foundation of these basic things with diet, lifestyle, rest and sleep,

which is an important part of it too and recovery. Yeah, what are your thoughts on that? Oh, peptides are, I just started really working with and learning about peptides over the last year. And they're remarkable at what they can do for the body. We had an expert on our show, Dr. Seeds, who's one of the leading researchers and doctors that work with peptides. And he really illuminated to me on what some of their effects and benefits are. So now there's a lot of peptides that are out there. but some of them have some pretty remarkable pro-health effects and they're different than drugs.

This was a big one for me. When I asked them this, what's the difference between a peptide and a pharmaceutical? Well, peptides already exist in the body. So what we're doing is we're using something the body's familiar with already has control mechanisms and barriers so that it doesn't overdo things. It doesn't downregulate receptors or cause other side effects. We know what the peptide. They're already in your body.

So when we give you this peptide, it's a very bad thing. it's a signal your body's used to. And that's why we don't see lots of these negative effects like we would with pharmaceuticals. So I thought that was interesting. The follow-up question was, well, why aren't it wasn't every pharmaceutical company selling peptides? Well, the answer to that is their compound pharmacies can create them. You can't patent them. So you see right now these gLP1 agonists like semi-glutide or what's the OZempic is the brand name, right?

That's making lots of waves right now. Orgovi. Yeah, right? you could buy some of glutide from a compounding pharmacy, and you're not getting Ozempic the brand name, but it's the same thing. In fact, they're lobbying the FDA, of course, to stop this because I think they want to protect their profits. But it is an interesting space. But you're right.

In comparison to other lifestyle changes, they pale in comparison. But peptides can be pretty interesting, especially as you get older. And if you've done all the other stuff and you want to kind of like take it to the next level, I've now experienced certain peptides. and some of them are pretty remarkable. BPC 157, thymus and beta four. I'm noticing some very interesting effects from those in terms of inflammation and recovery.

So, you know, but those aren't things that I would, you know, recommend to clients before having them work on their diet or exercise. Here's something that's, you know, it's common. Once I say this compound, you'll know it because everybody knows it, but it's quite clear that this is a pro-longevity, pro-health, pro-wellness supplement, which is cratine. That was originally sold for people want to build muscle or improve their strength and performance. Cratene is healthy. It's healthy across the board.

It's good for everybody. It's very good for mitochondrial health. It's very good for the heart. It's good for the brain. Most people should be taking cratine because it's got health benefits across the board. And in fact, the wellness space is starting to now promote it. But I think in the next 10 years, it's going to be, we're going to give it to everybody because it seems to have health benefits across the board.

It's also the most studied supplement. There's literally thousands of studies on in creatine. It's very safe compound as well. So that's something that I like to help. Do you know enough about creatine to kind of explain to the audience kind of how it works and why it's beneficial? Yeah. So creatine increases or helps fuel the amount of ATP.

that your body uses, which is a fundamental, you know, muscle energy, or should I say a fundamental form of energy for all mitochondria. So more ATP means mitochondria, um, operates, uh, more effectively and efficiently. We just talked about mitochondria earlier, about its role, you know, mitochondrial dysfunction in cancer. They see mitochondrial dysfunction in all, and almost all chronic kind of health issues. So it's keeping the mitochondria healthy. It also reduces the amount of methyl donors you need for lots of complicated processes in the body. So you'll hear that sometimes like, oh, you need more methyl donors. You should supplement with methyl B vitamins or if you have this particular gene variant or whatever. Cratein is very effective at that. But if you look at the data, look at the data

on creatine and cognitive function, depression, heart function, liver function, you know, you know, just the entire body. It seems to have this bone, bone health, of course, muscle health across the board. And again, it's got a lot of studies. I mean, you could literally, I think thousands, if I'm not mistaken, of studies have been done on great team. So good stuff. Any other supplements that you are found of in terms of now kind of moving from foundational

to bonus and optimization? Yeah. Of course, you can go, and we've done so many episodes about the benefits of all sorts of different. There's an endless list of supplements that are there, omega's and this and that, but specifically in the context of building lean muscle mass, dialing in body composition. Yeah. Nothing is going to beat

filling in nutrient deficiency. Okay. So if you get a nutrient test and you're not in optimal range for vitamin D, which is quite common, a lot of people are deficient in vitamin D or magnesium. It's another common one, that's a common one and you supplement or B, B vitamin, especially if you're a vegan, and you fill that nutrient gap, it'll have profound effects on your health. Not because those nutrients are magic, but rather you are operating below, you know, how your body's supposed to operate because you were deficient in this thing.

So like vitamin D deficiency, depression, anxiety, low testosterone, skin, bone, hair issues. So you all of a sudden fill that nutrient gap and it's like, like, oh my God, I feel so much better. So nothing's going to beat that. The second thing would be creatine. The third thing, just because of its utility as a protein supplement, because, you know, what I said earlier, if you try this, look, if you listen to what I said and you're like, okay, I'm going to hit my target body weight in protein, you're going to find pretty quickly

it's hard. It's not easy. It produces a lot of satiety, you know, really, really, you know, whole foods that contain protein just fill you up. It's tough to hit those numbers. So a protein powder can be beneficial. And I like to use it to fill the gap. So you hit the end of the day, if you look at your protein take, I'm 30 grams off, take a 30 gram protein shake and that'll give you some pretty profound benefits. I don't think you should depend on a protein shake though. I think it's like I said, use it as a, oh, I didn't hit my targets. Now I'm going to take the shake to fill those needs.

And that's pretty much it. Other supplements, you know, in special populations, will have benefits. You know, Oshuaganda seems to have some benefits for stress management as an adaptogen, but there's some cases where it might not be a good idea. Rodeola, you know, is another one that might have some benefits. But they're, you know, we're talking about like 1% effect when you're when you're comparing it to, you know, diet, exercise, sleep and lifestyle. Any modalities that you're a big fan of when it comes to recovery besides, of course,

making sure that people are eating appropriate amount of protein I often find. And that was one of the things that I noticed. I used to always feel that, oh, when I go to the gym and I like lift hard, I feel like really sore. And then I work with a great training group out here. I think I mentioned you last time for almost a year. It's called Ultimate Performance. They're out of the UK. And just by consistently making sure that I hit my protein goals every day, I was immediately less sore, even though I was much older than when I was, you know, first sort of dabbling a little bit here and there in doing some tiny bit of strain training, even though I was never, you know, consistent about it. So anything that you're a big fan of on the recovery side?

Well, nothing's going to be good sleep. Now, a lot of people, when I say that, like, oh, I get good sleep. Here's something that everybody, most people do that they don't realize is compromising their sleep quality and actually having a pretty big effect on their recovery and also their health. Okay, so I'll paint the picture. Everybody does this, right? They go to bed at the same time, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Friday comes along, well, I don't have to wake up early on Saturday.

So I'm going to go to bed two or three hours later. Saturday comes along, well, I don't need to work Sunday. I've got to wake up late. I'm going to sleep in. So I'm going to go to bed two or three hours later than I normally do. Monday comes along, guess what happens? Jet lag. You literally give yourself jet lag every single week.

look at the studies on the detrimental effects of jet lag and we give ourselves we literally change our circadian rhythm once a week every single week this is why people hate Mondays waking up Mondays like oh it's so painful is because you gave yourself jet lag you can't make up for that by sleeping in by the way there's a little bit of benefit to it but you can't talk to any sleep expert so just do this go to bed and wake up the same time every single day that will have profound benefits for recovery, profound. So sleep is up at the top. There's other things you can do for sleep that I'm sure you've had people on your show talk

about. But that one right there, I tell people that and it blows their mind. It's like, oh my God, I do that every weekend. I would love to bring up a test. I just texted you an article that I came across recently in Psychiatrist.com. If you could bring it up. This is. Yep, there it is.

Did you see this? No. Okay. So title of this paper. It's title of an article. And then we'll click into the paper in a second. why sleep consistency may be more important than duration. So if you scroll down it says new paper, let's go ahead and click on that.

According to a new paper, so this was the mind-blowing part that was there. So the title of paper is sleep regularity is a stronger predictor of mortality risk than sleep duration, a prospective cohort study. So this was done in the UK by a group of individuals that I believe are affiliated with Oxford. And in this subset, they took almost 67,000 people that they had attached watch, accelerometers to as part of this study and they looked at one week of data about sleep consistency and they found that people who had the best sleep consistency and sleep regularity which was defined as going to sleep around the same time within an within like an hour every night and then

waking up around the same time and they had a sleep midpoint which honestly i didn't fully understand how they calculated that or what the benefit was but essentially was going to sleep regularly and waking up at the same time, those individuals had an all-cause mortality risk decrease. We'll put on our YouTube page and we'll link to it at the bottom because we're writing an article on it. But it was something crazy.

You had like a 68% decrease in all-cause mortality. You had a decrease in cancer. And this was predictive. So even though it was only one week of looking at this data from this accelerometer, quite a decent-sized group of people, 67,000 people, it was predictive of who later ended up developing and dying early and who developed cancer and these other things. So not to say that sleep duration isn't important, and that's what the

researchers are saying, is just that sleep consistency going back to circadian rhythms and all these other aspects is so crucial if we want to get all the benefits of sleep. Yeah, it's, when I bring this up, people always trip out over it. But look at the data on swing shift workers. Have you seen that? I mean, the cancer risk, the heart disease risk, I mean, all chronic disease risk with controls goes through the roof with people who don't go to bed when the sun goes down and don't wake up when the sun goes up. We evolved this way. Okay, humans did not evolve unless there was an emergency or famine or something crazy.

When it got dark, we're not very good at singing the dark. Okay, we're actually food. If you go out in nature and the wilderness and it's the sun is down, you are food. So we went in to our caves or went to our, and we went to our, and we went to asleep. That's what we did. And we woke up when the sun went up. What we do in modern societies because we can artificially create light and whatever and we distract ourselves and have entertainment. We literally throw our circadian rhythms off every single week. So think about this. If you're listening right now, think about how terrible it feels Monday morning when you got to wake up at 6 a.m.

after sleeping in Saturday and Sunday because you went to bed so late. It feels terrible. It probably takes you until Tuesday or Wednesday to adjust. And then you repeat the cycle again. So literally, it's just such a simple hack. Go to bed at the same time, wake up at the same time, no matter what. Now, of course, there's going to be exceptions and stuff like that. But if you do this for the most part, you'll notice a profound impact on your recovery, on your strength, on your performance, just by doing that simple thing right there.

You're literally jet lagging yourself every week. What's your take on alcohol consumption? Yeah. You know, when it comes to substances like alcohol, hall, there's a trade-off. And the trade-off is this, because you can also get too fanatical with the, is it good for me? Is this perfect? Right.

There's also life quality, quality of life. So if I'm meeting up with you and we're good friends, we haven't seen each other for a while, we're both health conscious people. We sit down, we're like, let's have some wine and hang out. There's some health benefits to that wine. Now, it's not physiological benefits. I know some people make arguments about the reservoirs, trawl or antioxin, whatever, glass of grape juice would do the same thing, I guess.

It's, that's, there's, physiologically, there's really no benefits. Alcohol's not really good for you, okay? But you and I bonding, connecting, catching up, having a great time, that's got benefits, right? So there's a bit of a tradeoff, I think. And I think that's true for lots of things that we do that we wouldn't necessarily put in the category of, you know, healthy, right? Like going on vacation, not working out, indulging in.

the foods of the culture that we're around and, you know, drinking some alcohol with my wife and having a great time. Like, yeah, I'm not working out. I'm not being perfect. But is that good for me? Of course it is. Of course it is. So there's a life quality aspect as well.

There's a term called orthorexia, which describes the extreme case of being unhealthy because you're too healthy. Follow orthorexics. These are people who stress out over every morsel that they put in their, mouth. Everything that they do has to be perfect and structured and aligned because it has to be perfectly healthy. And they're not very healthy if you look at them. They have high rates of anxiety and depression and medication and their mortality isn't super great as well. You know, there was a study that was, I often quote, that showed that having poor relationships

was as bad for your health as smoking 10 cigarettes a day, I think it was. So there's a balance there. So, you know, if you're drinking at home by yourself, you know, to numb yourself, probably not a good idea. But if you have the occasional glass of wine or bottle of wine with your friends because you're bonding and having a great time, it's probably okay. Yeah, there's this whole movement now of like people kind of seeking out natural wines. I don't know if you've, you know, when you've gone back to Italy to visit or Sicily, which, by the way, Sicily is one of my favorite places. Oh, good. You've been there. I've been to a few spots.

Ortegia, Ortegia. Okay. I've never been there. Been to Taormina? Taramina. Yeah, beautiful. I was there just for a wedding earlier this year. Gorgeous.

Beautiful place. If you've ever gone to Europe or Italy and you've had like traditional sort of like table wines, right? There's a few things you notice. Number one, they have like less alcohol. That's the first thing. A lot of the wines we've had here, especially the ones that have become more globalized. And you look at the wine industry, it's been sort of manufactured to be higher alcohol wines, you know, 14, 15, 15, 16. 16, 17, 19% sometimes wines that people are picking up in terms of alcohol percentage because

they've had to keep up with all the other hard liquors and other things and make inroads into the market. The other thing is that I learned from my friends, no affiliation with them, but they start a company called Dry Farm wines. Okay. I haven't. They're up in the Bay Area and they test wines to make sure that they're like mold-free because mold is a big issue in barrels.

But in the U.S. alone, there's like hundreds of additives. that you can put in to wine without disclosing it on the label. Like you can make it taste sweeter. You can put in added sulfates. You can do this. You can do that. You can, it's like almost as processed as ultra-process foods.

So this whole natural wine movement, I think is really good for people going back to probably, if wines are a healthier part and people can enjoy them in a way, it's probably going to be more how like we consume them in the past with people and environment and not at home by yourself. Yeah, now you're talking. See, I think, look, I've talked, I just did a whole spiel about hyper-palatable foods and palatibility and whatever.

But there's a big difference between, you know, me visiting my aunt, who haven't seen in a while, who makes this incredible dish, a Sicilian dish called pasta, Pasta Alphorno, okay? Now, it's not healthy, okay? But when I go there and she prepares it, she takes her time to cook it, and maybe I go there early and I help her out. And then we sit down and enjoy the meal together. That's very different than me grabbing a box of cookies or Doritos or cheese it's, okay?

Even if the macros are controlled, there's a value there that's a little bit different. So I think when you look at your food and you respect it and it's like, I'm not drinking this to get drunk. I'm drinking this to enjoy it and enjoy our company. Very different. I'm not eating this to just numb myself. And, you know, one of the behaviors that you'll notice, maybe even in yourself, when you eat, things in an unhealthy way, okay, is you're not enjoying the bite that's in your mouth. You're thinking about the one that's on the fork or the piece that's in your hand.

You ever do that? You eat something and you just, it's like you can't even enjoy this one. You just want to get the next one. Yeah, like potato chips. Yes. Versus you and I go to dinner and somebody just makes an incredibly enjoyable meal and we're enjoying it. We're savoring it, right?

So, I know, I've had alcohol, like when I was a kid, you know, when we make stupid decisions, not that I don't make them now, but a lot more when I was younger. Well, we go and the goal is to get drunk. I'm not enjoying this drink. It's like, we're just going to get drunk because, I don't know, maybe I'm anxious and it's social lubricant, who knows, right? But versus now, if you and I go and enjoy, I'm going to enjoy and savor what's in this class and I'm going to enjoy the conversation.

So I think that falls in line with that. Like, I don't think palatable foods are necessarily a bad. bad thing, when you respect them, you prepare them and you enjoy the company that you're with if it brings people together. So now we're talking about the balance around these types of things. And I think you can bring that all the way back to something that I said earlier. Okay. If you feed yourself, if you exercise yourself, if your behaviors, if the things that you do center around self-care, then you're probably going to make a lot of balanced decisions. So if I go, if you ask me, you invite me to go out to have some pizza and some beer,

and I'm in the mode of self-care, I can make a very balanced decision. I can say, oh, my health hasn't been so good lately. I think I'm going to skip on that, but I'll come hang out with you. Or, yeah, you know what, I've been eating pretty good and pretty healthy. I feel good. I'm going to enjoy some beer and some pizza with you. So I think the decisions you make when they come from that place, what you'll find is you'll start to more naturally find a place of balance.

And I think that's the root of the sustainability of a healthy lifestyle. If you don't have that, it's either going to be obsession, body obsession, some kind of dysmorphia or some kind of orthorexia is really what's going to keep you consistent. And that's not healthy either. One of the things I really appreciate about your message is that you are the first person admit that the fitness space and the health and wellness space hasn't done the best job and in some cases done a bad job of communicating a lot of the basics that are there and you're trying to write those wrongs you and your team and I think you've been doing a great

job about that and that we all have to be protective of the over marketing over exaggerations extreme polarizing views of people wanting us to demonize certain macronutrients certain you know food things saying that you know completely stay away from processes foods. And I think that's an important message because really this is about the foundational things that we do, you know, 80 to 90% of the time. And then there's that aspect that's going to be our own life and the contextualization where truly if it is actually 10, 5% of your life, then great. Go ham and have fun and do the things that you want to do. Another area, and the reason I enjoy following you on Twitter is that you are X now, is that you're also very vocal about being

people being protective of their minds of this onslaught of kind of, for lack of a better term, mainstream media trying to demonize the approach of health and fitness. You made a hint to this previously, but you were talking about, you know, you can Google some of the articles that are out there, but, you know, oh, fitness and getting fit has its roots in ultra right nationalist or white nationalist. Another one that was there recently, Tesla, maybe if you can Google this, this is an article that was written and it was ultra right and seed oils, right? That anybody who wants to not overconsume or wants to stay away, there was a Rolling Stone article. It was called, Why is the Right so obsessed with seed oils?

It's by E.J. Dixon. and first of all, it's funny that that's being placed on, you know, the right. I have friends of all different political spectrums who actually have, which is what you're advocating for, a truly balanced approach, which is that great. Do we want to be overconsuming seed oils? And typically what has a lot of seed oils, it's ultra-process foods. Yeah, thank you, yes. Right?

And it's okay to want to avoid that. And at the same time, too, seed oils and having it once is not going to be. kill you, you know, overnight. And it doesn't have to be this thing that plays into orthorexia. So I'm bringing all these things up because I want to give you an opportunity to sort of talk about why do you feel like it's important for you as, you know, an authority in this space to want to speak up about some of these coordinated attempts of people trying to demonize healthy approaches to living? I think it's safe to say. And I think most people agree. that everything these days has become politicized.

I never thought that they would come for health and fitness. It didn't make any sense. How is health and fitness political? And yet here they are somehow politicizing or demonizing something that there isn't a person in this world whose life would not improve if their health improved. Everybody's life would improve. I don't care what you believe in. If you got healthier, more mobile.

more functional, your life would improve. Also, I said this earlier. Gims are the most, people like to talk about inclusivity and non-judgmental places. Go to a gym. There is no place on earth more accepting. You go in there as an obese, out of shape, unhealthy person. Go try to exercise. The most support you'll get will be from the fanatics in that space.

So I take it very personal when they try to attack fitness because not only is it wrong, it's the opposite of right. All right. So let me paint the picture real quick so people can understand why this is happening. Okay. I don't think it's a political party

necessarily that's going after one side or the other. Some people can make that argument. But here's what it is. When people are unhealthy, they're very profitable. Go to the grocery store. Take all of the foods and products

that we could label as not healthy and take all the foods and products that are labeled as healthy. line them up which one makes up a bulk of the grocery store. Your consumption habits when you're unhealthy are very different than when you're healthy. It's easy to sell you a lot of products that are processed and patented when your consumption habits are based off of an unhealthy lifestyle versus healthy. What about medical costs, pharmaceuticals? Do pharmaceutical companies profit from your being healthy or profit from you being unhealthy?

Look at your consumption habits with technology. By the way, when I say healthy, I mean healthy. I don't just mean fit because there's fit unhealthy people too. I mean healthy. Like emotionally, physically, mentally, spiritually, you're a balanced, healthy person. What are your social media consumption habits? What are your technology consumption habits? What are your consumption habits just in general?

Do healthy people have shopping habits that are unhealthy? Not as much as people are unhealthy. who may buy things to fill holes or gaps in the way they feel. Look at your consumption habits with entertainment. I mentioned pharmaceuticals. It's in lots of markets best interests to prevent you from becoming healthier and more fit. It's lots of markets self-interest to take away the self-empowerment you get from being fit and healthy. When I'm sick now, if I were to get,

get ill tomorrow, I am more vulnerable to manipulation. I am not, I don't feel as strong. I don't feel as confident, okay? You take someone that's chronically unhealthy and you're manipulatable. You're very manipulatable. It's very easy for me to scare you into voting or buying in the way that I want. So when you see stuff like this, realize that they don't want a healthy population. they want an unhealthy population. And that's just a fact. And I don't care what market. You take any market, the makeup market, the moisturizer market, the clothing market, the car market, electronics, social media, medicine, supplements, food.

There's more money to make off of you when you are an unhealthy person. And again, in that entirety than when you're healthy. That's just a fact. And that's a sad fact. But that's what we're up against. And I say we, and I mean that as those of us who truly understand what we're up against and who are trying to really help people. You know, I didn't become a trainer to make a lot of money.

By the way, that's a terrible way to make a lot of money. One thing I love about trainers and fitness coaches is that they don't do it because they're looking for honor or glory or money. It's a terrible way to do all of those things. Maybe a little bit easier now with social media, but you talk to any trainer and you ask them why they became a trainer. I just want to help people. I really want to help people. I love what I do.

I want to help people out. And that's what I did for years. I just stumbled upon this social media thing, starting a podcast that became very successful. But the whole goal behind it wasn't even to make a ton of money. It was like, can we reach more people with this message? We don't like the direction of the fitness industry. We were sick and tired. And I say we because I've co-hosts that we're also trainers.

We were sick and tired of having to close. constantly battle this with our clients. Can we put this message out and reach more people? So that's when you see stuff like that. Like fitness is fat shaming. That's another one. That's crazy. Fat shaming.

That's terrible. Now, yeah, sure, some people will shame themselves into fitness, but one message you'll hear me communicate time and time again is don't work out because you hate yourself. It's a terrible way to achieve any kind of success. Do it because you care about yourself. Fitness is self-care. So I take it very personal when I see these crazy. messages. By the way, people's voting habits do, and we have strong evidence to suggest that they do

tend to change when people become more fit and healthy. So that may also be why you see some of this stuff. Yeah. If I could add my own perspective into the mix, I think that's also since the pandemic, there's been a lot of awareness across the board that just because certain authority figures are communicating something as being healthy or not being healthy, I think a lot of people had a wake-up call in a very short period of time that typically in years of the past might take decades or, you know, centuries to sort of play out. In a very short period of time, people got a chance to see that, hey, some of the people that were so sure that X, Y, and Z was healthy

or in another instance, not healthy, or right for your health or protective of your health, oh, wow, that didn't turn out to be true. What else is out there that I should start questioning? And I think that anytime you start questioning and you look at authority figures and say, okay, well, that's one group of people that feel another way. What do the people who are actually genuine experts in this space or what are people who have a counterpoint of view? What do they have to say?

Because I want to hear all sides of the situation. And I think that people, in the case of this Rolling Stone article, I read it in full when it first came out. My friend Callie Means wrote a beautiful response to it is that, oh, so many experts that are out there, including the heads of Tufts Medical School and Nutrition School, have said year over year why seed oils are completely safe. We should have no worries at all. And this questioning of authority, it's dangerous.

it's dangerous to question because this is just going back to this whole quote unquote right movement of the population where people are not accepting and everybody thinks that they're their own expert. Meanwhile, in the same article, they're quoting people that are saying, look, generally, most seed oils are going to be found in processed foods and it's going to be good for people to stay away from ultra processed foods. And the author themselves acknowledges that that's a good thing to do. Yeah.

Now, in defense of different foods. authors that are out there and everybody should be aware of this often and journalists doesn't choose the title and it's usually an editor sure at a paper a magazine the news whatever that's choosing it and they'll often split test different titles to see what ends up drawing even if it's negativity what ends up drawing the most amount of people that are there so who knows what you know the journalists themselves would have chosen but be aware of these things because a lot of them are playing back into this idea that

hey, we are victims in society. And I had a good friend a few years ago, share this idea. He called it the law of responsibility. He said, if you are part of the problem, that's a good thing. Because if you are part of the problem, that means that you're part of the solution. If you had no participation in the problem, if you had no fault, even if it was the tiniest little part of it, then that means that you are a victim to the circumstances. them there. And I think that your message is an empowering one because it's like, listen,

we have agency, we can make our lives better, we have control. Yes, does it take a little bit of hard work? For sure, but it's straightforward when you understand the basics. Instead, the alternative is if we're going to be play into the victim idea in any aspect of our life, even in our own personal relationships that are out there, we will end up signing ourselves up for a life of suffering. 100%. And the, when you go on a pro-growth,

pro-personal growth journey, fitness is a nice vehicle for that. You're going to make mistakes. Everybody does. But you have agency. And you learn and you understand. And by the way, you know, look, science is objective.

It's an objective tool. Scientists are not. We're people. We're all people. And so people can be wrong. They could be nefarious. They could be influenced. So this whole message of not questioning authority to me is very interesting.

Not questioning authority has caused some of the biggest travesties in human history. So I don't understand that. You mentioned the last few years and what we all went through. They're very clear what happened there. It's very clear. We worship the wrong thing. We worshipped safety. We worshipped not getting infected.

And so what we did is we compromised everything else to serve that God that we had made our God. And so what did we do? We didn't go see family members. We didn't go see people when people died. We didn't go to funerals. We didn't visit people in hospitals. We made three-year-olds wear masks. We told kids they couldn't go to school. What's the result of that? We were worse off. We were worse off. So to the people who question things and try to keep things leveled and balanced out, like I appreciate you. Keep doing that. That's what this is all about. And yes, we have a lot more control. Like you said, these articles, they wouldn't exist if we didn't consume them. So we do take, you know, larger responsibilities on our shoulders. But again, healthy people make different

consumption habits. And when you go on that pro growth, watch what happens. Go on your social media with the mindset of what's good for me for personal growth. Watch how your algorithm changes. All of a sudden, you're not going to see this crap. Sal, this has been great. It's been an amazing round two. As we wind down here, any final things that you want to cover that we didn't? I feel like we hit a good list of topics. I feel we didn't cover? No, I appreciate everything that we're talking about.

I love discussing these types of things. Look, my expertise is fitness and nutrition. But when it comes to health, there's a lot of things that encompass health, not just fitness and nutrition. But look, if you pursue becoming healthier through the right mindset, you'll find yourself learning lots of incredible things and you'll put yourself on this path towards personal growth that will be very, very satisfying

and it is a journey, it never ends. So don't worship the results, don't worship the goal or the destination, learn to enjoy the process and then you'll never stop. That's what we would want to wish for everyone. That's what I'm trying to step into in my own world and I've been sharing a lot of my results

with my listeners and followers along the way because I'm trying to figure it out myself. And it's never, not that I'm old at 41, you know, that's still quite young, but even the most hopeful thing. And even though I have different cohorts that are there, I just want to bring people back to that quote that you shared earlier. The biggest gains that you see are for people 65 and older. It's never too late to start. You know, regardless of what age you are today, your body will immediately start to respond. Yes.

Right? Your body will immediately start to respond and adapt. And that is the most hopeful and beautiful message for anyone else. 100%. Thank you so much. Zal, just again, shout out to your podcast. If you can mention where people can check it out and how they can keep in touch with you. Yeah, mind pump.

And you can find us on YouTube, Spotify, iTunes, anywhere you can listen to a podcast. And you can watch us on YouTube. It's also a show that you can watch. And we have a good time. We cover current events. We talk about family life. We try to make it entertaining because we know that you'll get more. people that way to listen to the fitness stuff. And you guys do like an episode every day?

Five days a week. Five days a week. Fantastic. We like to talk. Well, we'll have the link for that below. Sal, a pleasure. Thank you for coming back on the podcast. Thank you so much for having me on. Thank you.